by Christiane F
I was suspicious even during my first visit to Narc Anon. Christiane had become a stranger to me already. Something had been destroyed. Up until then, despite everything, she'd still had a connection to me—but now that was gone. It was like she'd been brainwashed.
It was at this point that I asked my ex-husband to take Christiane out of Berlin, to Western Germany. But he preferred to take her in himself. He'd be able to deal with her, he said. And if she didn't cooperate, then maybe a little corporal punishment would help.
I didn't object. I'd reached the end of my rope. I'd already made so many mistakes and miscalculations that suddenly I was afraid to take any further actions of my own.
BEFORE WE WENT HOME TO MY DAD'S, he dragged me with him to his favorite bar, the Hungry Woodpecker, at the Wutzkyallee subway station. He wanted to order me a drink,37 but I just wanted some juice. He said I had to put a stop to taking drugs if I didn't want to die, and I said, “Well, yeah, that's exactly why I wanted to stay at Narc Anon.”
The jukebox kept playing the same song over and over again. A few teens were playing pinball and pool. My dad said that they were all just good, normal teens. If I hung out here more often, I'd make some new friends and realize how crazy and stupid it was to mess around with junkies and other dope fiends all the time.
I was barely listening. I was angry and exhausted and just wanted to be left alone. I hated everyone, and just when I felt like I might have found a kind of escape, a route to a better life, my dad had slammed the door right in my face. I took Janie into bed with me that night and asked her, “Janie, do you understand us humans?” I answered for her: “No, of course you don't. You run up to everyone, wagging your tail. You think people are good.”
I didn't like that about her. I would've preferred it if she would have growled at people first. She shouldn't be so trusting.
When I woke up, I saw that Janie hadn't yet peed on the floor, so I was eager to take her out right away. My dad had already left for work. When I went to open the front door, it was locked. I yanked at the door handle; I threw myself against the door. It stayed shut. I forced myself to stay calm and not to freak out. How could my own dad lock me up like a wild animal? Especially when he knew I had a dog.
I tore through the apartment, looking for a key. I thought he must have put a key somewhere. What if there was a fire? I looked under the bed, on the windowsills, even in the fridge. No key. I didn't have time to really freak out because I had to do something with Janie before she ruined the carpet. I took her out on the balcony, and she understood what to do.
Then I went to take a tour of my little prison. A lot had changed since I'd last been here. The bedroom was empty since my mom had taken the beds with her. There was a new couch in the living room, where my dad now slept, and a brand-new color TV. The rubber plant was gone and so was the bamboo rod that my dad used to beat me with and store in that pot. Now there was a jade tree plant instead.
The old wardrobe was still in the kids' room, and you could still only open one of its doors; otherwise the whole thing would collapse. The bed made creaking and cracking noises whenever you moved. It's pretty sad when your own dad can't even provide you with a decently furnished holding cell.
I went back out to the balcony with Janie. She put her front paws on the railing and looked down from our eleventh-floor apartment. All we could see were the desolate high-rises and barren landscapes of Gropiusstadt.
I had to talk to someone, so I called up Narc Anon. They had a surprise for me. Babsi had shown up. So I guess she'd actually been serious about quitting. She told me that they'd given her my bed. I was so sad that I wasn't there with her. We talked for a long time.
When my dad came back, I gave him the silent treatment, but that just had the effect of making him talk even more. He'd planned my whole future out for me. Gave me an actual schedule for every day, including housework, grocery shopping, and feeding his homing pigeons and cleaning up their roost.
He had a shelter for his pigeons out in Rudow, too. Every time he went out, he wanted to be able to check up on me by phone. To fill up all my free time, he'd found an old friend of mine, Katharina, who was willing to come and hang out with me. She was a real teenybopper, still in love with top 40 radio and other crap like that.
A reward was in it for me, too. He wanted to take me to Thailand with him sometime. He flew to Thailand at least once a year now. He loved it there because of the girls, but also because he was able to get some really cheap clothes. He saved up all of his money for these trips of his. In a way, that was his drug of choice.
So I listened to my dad's plans and thought I'd just play along for a while. I didn't really have a choice, anyway. At least that way I wouldn't be locked up.
The next day I had a packed schedule. First I had to clean the apartment and then go shopping. Then Katharina came over to take me for a walk. We went all over the place, and then when I told her that I still had to go to Rudow to feed the pigeons, she lost interest and gave up.
So I had the rest of the afternoon to myself. I was miserable, and one way or another I just wanted to get high. I didn't really know what to do though. I thought that maybe I could go to the Hasenheide for an hour. That's a public park in Neukölln and a good place to go if you want to smoke some weed. A joint sounded pretty good right then.
I didn't have any cash, but I knew where I could find some. My dad collected silver coins in an oversized brandy bottle. There were more than a hundred marks in that bottle, stored up for his next trip to Thailand. I shook fifty marks out of the bottle. I wanted to have a little extra with me, just in case. Whatever was left over I could put back, and then I thought I could probably replace what I'd spent with money I saved while shopping. That was my plan anyway.
In Hasenheide park, I ran into Piet. (He was the kid from Center House who was with me when I'd smoked pot for the first time in my life.) He'd become a heroin addict, too. So I asked him if they had anything besides weed at this park of his.
He asked, “Do you have cash?” I told him I did.
“Come with me then.” He took me to a couple of dealers, and I bought a quarter. I had ten marks left now. We went to the public bathrooms at the entrance to the park, and Piet let me borrow his syringe. He'd become a really slick old junkie in the time since I'd last seen him, and I had to give him half of my dope to use his syringe. We both gave ourselves a little fix.
I felt amazing. The atmosphere at Hasenheide park was way better, way less fucked up than at places like Kurfürstendamm or Zoo Station. The fact that it was mainly just a place to smoke some weed made all the difference in the world. But there were still some junkies, if you poked around a little bit. It didn't cause problems, though, as the junkies and the potheads were generally able to chill out together, side by side. At the Ku'damm, pot was disdained—it was “for lightweights”—and potheads were generally snubbed. The two groups never mixed at Kurfürstendamm.
At Hasenheide, it didn't matter what drug you were on. You could even be sober. It wasn't an issue. You just needed to be cool. That was it. Whether you were high or not, if you were cool, then everyone else was cool with you. It was like everyone was part of a big, peaceful community—making music, banging on drums, and just hanging out. The whole atmosphere reminded me of Woodstock.
I was home again before my dad got back from work around six. He didn't notice that I was high. I was feeling a little guilty because I hadn't been able to feed the pigeons. I decided to give them a double portion the next day. I thought that the next time I went to the park I wouldn't shoot up because even if I just smoked a little pot I would feel all right, and I would still be accepted, too. I never wanted to return to the nasty heroin scene at Kurfürstendamm. I truly believed I could manage to get off of H at Hasenheide.
I started going to the park with Janie every afternoon, even if it was just for a minute. The dog loved it there because there were lots of other dogs running around. And even the dogs were totally friendly. E
veryone liked Janie, and she got a lot of attention.
I only fed the pigeons every second or third day. That was more than enough as long as I stuffed them and left some extra on the floor for them.
I would smoke weed whenever someone asked me—and someone always did. That's also one of the major differences between the people who smoke pot and the people who shoot heroin: Potheads are always willing to share. I also got to know the foreign guy who had dealt to Piet and me on that first day. When I saw him again, he was lying down on a blanket with a couple of other friends of his—also foreigners. He invited me over, and I lay down in the grass next to their blanket. The dealer's name was Mustafa and he was Turkish. The others were Arabs, and they were all under twenty years old. They were just having a picnic of flatbread with cheese and melon, and they shared some of their lunch with me and Janie.
Mustafa was kind of cool, I thought. He was a dealer, but he was cool about it. He wasn't crazy or cocky or unpredictable like all the big-shot dealers were. While we talked, Mustafa pulled up clumps of grass and buried his bags of dope inside the cavities. So even if the cops raided the whole area, they'd never find his dope. If someone wanted to buy from him, Mustafa would then calmly poke around in the grass with his pocketknife until he found the supply.
He didn't weigh out his baggies like all the other dealers did. He just gave you what he took out with his knife. The portions were good though. Whatever stuck to the knife, he'd wipe off with two fingers and let you snort.
Mustafa said right off the bat that shooting up was fucked up. The only way to keep from getting addicted was to snort it. So that's what he and all his friends were doing. They only snorted once in a while, if they felt like it. None of them appeared to be addicted.
Mustafa didn't want me to become addicted again, so he was careful about how much he gave to me. These guys really knew how to handle heroin. I started seeing Mustafa and the other foreigners in a different light. They weren't like the predatory customers that had always offended Stella, Babsi, and me. They were very proud and easy to offend. They accepted me because I seemed very self-confident and maybe because I was a pretty quick study and realized quickly how things worked with them. To give just one example, you weren't ever allowed to ask for anything. Hospitality was extremely important to them. If you wanted something, you just helped yourself—whether it was sunflower seeds or heroin that you wanted. But you had to be careful not to give them the impression that you were taking advantage of their hospitality. So it would've never crossed my mind to ask them if I could take some H with me when I left. Whatever I took from them, I snorted immediately. Because I was able to assimilate so quickly, they kind of took me in—despite the fact that they didn't generally think very highly of German girls. And they had a point: In a lot of ways, they really were better than us.
I loved everything about this world and even started to think that I'd kicked the habit for good—until, that is, I took a look in the mirror and saw that, once more, I was physically dependent on the drug.
In the evenings, I played the role of the rehabilitated daughter for my dad. I'd go to the Hungry Woodpecker with him and would sometimes drink a small glass of beer, just to please him. To some extent I hated this bar, but at the same time I couldn't help wanting to be accepted here as well. I wanted to have a place here and be able to assert myself in this world where drugs didn't really have a role.
I practiced on the pinball machines and practiced intensely at the pool table. I also wanted to eventually learn how to play skat.38 I wanted to master all the masculine games. I wanted to be better than the men. If I had to spend time in this sorry environment, then at least I wanted to be able to make a reputation for myself. I didn't want to feel like people were looking down on me. I wanted to be treated like a star. I wanted to be strong and independent. Like Mustafa and his friends. I didn't want to have to ask for anything.
However, my first goal—to learn to play skat—was already falling apart. I now had other things to worry about: I was going into withdrawal again. I absolutely had to get over to the park every afternoon, and I needed to be able to spend some time there, as I couldn't just snort some of Mustafa's dope and go. I had to sit there and, in an unspoken way, negotiate with him, calmly chewing on sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, my dad's pigeons were now on their third day of going without. Every afternoon I had to lose Katharina, my chaperone, all over again, and then there was all the housework and grocery shopping to be done—and I had to always be careful to stay near the phone, in case my dad started calling. I was already running out of explanations for why I hadn't answered earlier. I wasn't feeling very good about things anymore.
Then, one day, someone came up behind me and clasped his hands over my eyes. I turned around, and there was Detlef. We hugged and kissed each other like our lives depended on it, and Janie jumped excitedly beside us. Detlef looked good. He said he was clean. I looked him in the eyes and said, “Yeah right, clean as a hog in mud. Your pupils are almost invisible already.” Detlef had quit while he was in Paris, but back at Zoo Station he'd had a shot.
We went home to my dad's. We still had some time before he got back from work. My bed was too rickety, so I laid the comforter on the floor and we had sex. It was great.
When it was over, we talked about getting clean again. Not right away, of course, but we planned to start the following week. Detlef told the story of how he and his friend had ripped off a customer to get the cash they needed for the trip to Paris. They'd simply locked the guy into his kitchen, calmly swiped his packetof Eurochecks,39 and sold the checks for a thousand marks to someone at Zoo Station. Bernd was already in jail for it, but Detlef didn't think that the cops would be able to find him since the customer didn't know his name.
We started meeting at the park every day, and most of the time we also managed to spend some time at my dad's as well, after we'd shot up. We didn't talk much about our plans for getting clean because we were just so happy to be together again. But it was getting more and more difficult for me to keep all the balls up in the air. My dad was checking up on me more often now and kept finding new chores for me to do. I needed even more time with Mustafa to get enough dope for Detlef, too. And I wanted to be able to spend some time alone with Detlef as well. All the old stresses had returned.
Also, at around this time I realized that in order to get all the money we needed, I would have to start working at Zoo Station again. I kept that fact secret from Detlef. But my feelings of optimism and hope were being gradually eroded as I was drawn into the junkie's routine all over again. The honeymoon period after withdrawal—the time when you can just relax and not worry about the pressure of scoring—was decreasing with every successive withdrawal.
About a week after Detlef came back, Rolf turned up at Hasenheide park. He was distraught and told me that the police had caught Detlef. They'd picked him up during a drug raid, and while they were at it, they also slapped him with the burglary charge. The guy who bought the checks from them had ratted him out.
I went to the bathrooms at the Hermannplatz, locked myself in, and cried until I felt totally drained. We'd flushed everything down the drain again. I was back in the real world, where I felt more hopeless than ever. I was scared about how much I was craving my next fix already. I just couldn't bear the thought of having to sit next to the Arab guys, calmly spitting out sunflower seeds and just waiting for them to offer me a snort. So instead, I took the subway to Zoo Station, sat on a ledge, and waited for customers. It was dead at the station, however, because apparently there was some big soccer game on TV.
But eventually someone showed up, and it turned out to be someone I knew. It was Heinz, who'd been Stella's and Babsi's regular. He was the guy who always paid in heroin and would add syringes as a bonus—but the thing was, he wanted to have sex. I didn't care anymore though. I knew that Detlef would be in jail for a long time. I walked over to him. He didn't recognize me at first, so I introduced myself again. “I'm Christiane,�
� I told him. “Babsi's and Stella's friend.” That got his attention. He asked me if I wanted to go with him and offered me two quarters.
We used the same currency, and that was nice. In fact, it was his best quality. Two quarters was good pay—about eighty marks when converted into cash. I negotiated some extra change for cigarettes, soda, and stuff, and off we went.
Heinz stopped at a corner on the way to buy some dope because I guess his reserves had run dry. It was kind of funny to see this accountant-type guy skulking in the shadows with the dealers. But he knew what he was doing. He had a reliable dealer here who always got him really good shit.
I had the itch pretty bad and could feel the withdrawal symptoms coming on. I would have preferred to shoot up right then and there in the car. But Heinz wasn't offering.
On the way to his apartment, he insisted on taking me to the stationery store that he owned, at street level. When we got there, he pulled open a desk drawer and showed me some photos he had taken. Just some trashy nude pictures of at least a dozen girls or so. Sometimes their whole body was in the photo; other times it was just a close-up. It was like being in a gynecologist's office. And all I could think was, You sad, pathetic asshole. In the meantime, I was still fixated on the dope in his pockets. I only started paying attention to the photos again when I recognized Stella and Babsi.
“Great photos,” I said. “But now let's get down to business. I need a shot.” We went upstairs to his apartment. He gave me my dope and also brought a tablespoon out for cooking it up. He apologized that he was out of teaspoons. (They'd all been taken by the other girls who had been over.) I banged in the shot, and then he brought me a bottle of nonalcoholic beer. After that, he left me alone for fifteen minutes. He had enough experience with junkies to know that they needed fifteen minutes of quiet afterward.